Jon Ledford first started at Arcade Sushi thinking that it was a sushi barcade, which unfortunately doesn't exist..yet. With distinct opinions in regards to gaming and a deep fondness of 90's cartoons, anime, B movies, and RPGs with world maps (no lists of cities and destinations, thank you), Jon spends his off time patiently waiting for an HD remake or sequel to Final Fantasy 6. Graduating magna cum laude from Rowan University and Atlantic Cape Community College's 2010 Communication Major of the Year, Jon is also the leader of an underground resistance fighting against the forcing of motion technology into the world of console gaming. Feel free to follow him @JonLedford.
Jon Ledford
Worst to First: James Bond Games
As the world is waiting for Daniel Craig to return to the suit and play our favorite martini-swigging, dame-slaying and bad guy-shooting special agent in Spectre, it's time we look back at 007's 10 best games in order to rank our favorite James Bond missions. As with most license-based franchises, the James Bond series has had its fair share of clunkers over the years, and the good 007 games out there are vastly outnumbered by the mediocre ones. Luckily, a few of them have beaten the curse of licensed games and established themselves as excellent titles in their own right.
Need for Speed Review (Xbox One)
Simply titled Need for Speed, this racer marks the franchise's first current-gen exclusive, finally focusing on getting the most it can from modern consoles without having to worry about including last-gen tech. Fortunately, this helps NFS look absolutely gorgeous, which ultimately matters when you factor in the underwhelming graphics of Gran Turismo 6 compared to the fine polish of Forza Motorsport 6. Utilizing the full extent of the current-gen hardware, Need for Speed revs up into a promising experience that is all about underground and urban street racing, but that doesn't necessarily guarantee a smooth ride.
10 Best SNES RPGs
The Super Nintendo Entertainment System spawned some of the greatest role-playing games ever made. The 16-bit RPGs created during the early '90s helped the genre grow beyond its niche audiences and expand into a broader fanbase. The widespread success of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (which we're not including in this list since we're classifying it as an action-adventure game) inspired a lot of action-RPGs in terms of top-down gameplay that didn't rely on turn-based combat.
Worst to First: Resident Evil
Resident Evil is one of the first video games to feature zombies in a Romero-like manner. After so many sequels and spin-offs over the years, it's time we ranked the series in ascending order to see what it takes to create a successful zombie game. Capcom has started to stray from the path over the past few entries of the franchise, resulting in a larger focus on action-oriented gameplay and less of survival horror, but a good game is a good game regardless of its premise or genre, just as long as it's done correctly. So mix a few herbs together, stay away from the windows and make sure you reload when no one is around, because it's time we go to Raccoon City and beyond as we rank the Resident Evil series from worst to first.
Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water Review (Wii U)
Koei Tecmo and Nintendo may have skipped out on taking the Wii's Project Zero: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse out of Japan, but the House of Mario decided to cave to fans' demands and give Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water a digital release for Western audiences. As the Silent Hill and Resident Evil series have started to stray and stumble in maintaining survival horror, Maiden of Black Water ups the frights. This new Fatal Frame purposely maintains a slow burn in order to properly build up suspense, bringing back the ghostbusting gameplay of the Camera Obscura, which now utilizes the Wii U's GamePad to exorcise the dead. In an era when survival horror has skewed into action-oriented gameplay or defenseless first-person perspectives, Maiden of Black Water is a welcome, old school-style callback to survival horror's glory days. Unfortunately, Fatal Frame 5 suffers from simple control issues pertaining to its core gameplay that should've easily been ironed out. Despite its solid attempts at spirit photography, there are some basic parts of Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water that feel underdeveloped, which can ruin the overall shot.
Assassin’s Creed Syndicate Review (PlayStation 4)
After the underwhelming reception the masses had to Assassin's Creed Unity and its Titanic-sized glitches, Ubisoft has decided to take the franchise to the Industrial Revolution and turn the Templar war into Gangs of New York. All DiCaprio references aside, Assassin's Creed Syndicate is a proper return to form which makes amends for Unity's shortcomings while establishing itself as one of the finer entries of the franchise. The series last two solid entries, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag and Assassin's Creed Rogue, took us across the Atlantic to the open seas of the new world, but Syndicate takes us to London as it's growing from the boom of the 19th century technology.
10 Game Franchises That Should’ve Stayed 2D
We've seen countless classics known for side-scrolling and 2D gaming fail to make the jump to 3D over the years. The success of Final Fantasy VII, Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time left numerous studios and publishers experimenting and trying to shoehorn their famous franchises into some kind of 3D game to try and recreate the success that those games had. Unfortunately, not every major video game series was able to properly make the transition to 3D and abandon its top-down or side-scrolling roots.
Worst to First: Assassin’s Creed
With Assassin's Creed Syndicate's release on the horizon, it's time we look back at the series best and worst entries. The war between the Templar and Assassins have been going on for centuries, and there have been all kinds of adventures where we played as a famous Assassin (and occasional Templar) to unearth secrets that could alter the future of humanity.
10 Best NES RPGs
Many of the games listed here on the 10 Best NES RPGs were either advanced ports of or heavily inspired by the CRPGs of the early-to-mid 1980s. Many of these Nintendo Entertainment System/Famicom role-playing games would go on to become more popular than the games that inspired them, but this was a pivotal point in time where the gaming scene started to change. Nintendo started to become the dominant hardware developer in terms of home gaming, and the RPG genre started to trickle its way onto the NES. Unfortunately, not every RPG that was made in Japan was able to cross the pond to the United States and vice-versa.
A Mountain to Climb (and Slay): Shadow of the Colossus Turns 10
Shadow of the Colossus will always be remembered as one of the greatest action-adventure games of the PlayStation 2-era. More importantly, it'll be remembered for the things that set it far apart from all of its contemporaries in the genre. Instead of the Zelda-esque format of traversing an overworld, finding dungeons and clearing their bosses, Shadow of the Colossus had a much simpler format. You had to roam the lands and defeat 16 enemies, but it was the way Shadow of the Colossus presented these enemies and the vague narrative surrounding the adventure that made it special.